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Watched on: Turner Classic Movies

Ran: 8.34 miles, 8’01”/mile, 01:06:52 (recovery run)

 

First run of October, and you know what that means: it’s Spooky Month™, so horror content starts cropping up in all sorts of places where it might not normally lurk. I was in the mood for a classic for tonight’s early recovery run, something familiar and not especially taxing. So on a hunch I took a spin through the Turner Classic Movies app, and lookee here: Village of the Damned, waiting for me like an old friend. An old, creepy-eyed, monotone-voiced friend with the Nordic blond bangs of a serial killer, sure, but an old friend nonetheless.

 

I’m talking about the 1960 original, of course—I confess I still haven’t seen the 1995 John Carpenter remake, though it’s on my (shamefully long) list, nor have I read the novel upon which the films are based, John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos, but I’ve just gotten my hands on a copy and look forward to checking out that source material. Village of the Damned is a longtime favorite of mine; a lot of the older black-and-white scary movies haven’t aged especially well, and just don’t seem especially scary when viewed with a modern eye. But this one… this one still reliably raises a chill or two.

 

The movie is short, and yet even the broad strokes of its story are pretty rich. One morning, the entire English village of Midwich passes out at the exact same time—people, horses, birds, all collapsing on the spot, including local smartypants Gordon Zellaby and his wife Anthea. Anthea’s brother Alan happens to be an officer at the nearby base and has brought in the British Army to investigate when, just as suddenly, everyone wakes up again, suffering no ill effects other than some bumps and bruises and a distinct feeling of cold. It’s a mystery, but none of the army’s tests show anything amiss and everything seems back to normal… until a few months later when it turns out that every single woman in Midwich of childbearing age is pregnant. That includes Anthea Zellaby—and also the town’s virgins and the wives whose husbands were away at sea! Scandalous!

 

The mystery pregnancies progress normally, albeit more quickly than one might expect, and finally all twelve babies are born on the same day. They seem mostly normal, though they’re on the heavier side and they have disconcerting eyes. As they get a bit older, Gordon notices that their hair is flat on one side in cross-section and their nails are a little narrower than typical—and while they’re four months old, they’re as grown and developed as an 18-month-old. Oh, and we see that they’ve already developed the power to COMPEL HUMANS TO DO THEIR BIDDING. When they’re older still, Gordon tests them with a puzzle box and finds that not only are they remarkably intelligent, but they’re also a hive mind: anything one of them learns, the rest of them know. And they can still control people’s minds, but they also like chocolate, so, y’know… pretty normal, right?

 

Once they reach school age, they telepathically compel their parents to dress them alike and give them really unflattering haircuts. They can also read people’s thoughts at this point, and since they’re talking, too, they make it pretty clear that they’re 1) devoid of morals and humanity, and 2) not much fun at parties. Kids that bully them wind up “mysteriously drowned,” a guy who almost accidentally hits one of them with his car winds up “mysteriously driving full-speed into a brick wall,” etc. Once the villagers twig what’s happening, the local torch-and-Frankenstein-rake mob comes a-callin’ at the school where the kids are now living together, intending some good old-fashioned get-them-before-they-get-us, but, all too predictably, they wind up “mysteriously setting fire to themselves, lol whoops.”

 

By now, the army has learned that Midwich was not the only village that underwent a mass blackout and impregnation, though, following news that the Russians have nuked their colony, Midwich is the only outpost that survives. And the kiddos, who pointedly refuse to answer Gordon’s questions about whether there’s life on other planets, inform him that ON A COMPLETELY UNRELATED NOTE they’re now old enough to fan out across the country and establish new colonies, so that’ll be fun. It’s up to Gordon to come up with a plan to foil an invading enemy that knows what he’s thinking and can pull his puppet strings anytime they like. Will he succeed? And more importantly, will his awesome dog Bruno survive? (Spoiler: Bruno is fine, and SUCH A GOOD DOG, YES HE IS!)

 

So yeah, Village of the Damned is 100% science fiction, no doubt—but it’s also horrifying, both in the abstract and the concrete. For one thing, an entire village suddenly and inexplicably dropping at once—and at first we can’t know they’re only asleep and not straight-up dead—is a pretty disquieting notion. For another, most people harbor a well-placed dread of creepy children. Imagine if the selfishness and amorality of an id-driven child were somehow also in possession of a great deal of power over others. (Was that political commentary? YOU TELL ME) Add in the horrors of watching people involuntarily self-immolate or blow their heads off with a rifle, not to mention the body-horror of forced impregnation and carrying offspring without knowing what it actually is, and yep, this flick is some old-school scary stuff, cheesy 1960 special effects notwithstanding.

 

It’s also super-British. Give it a whirl.